Misadventures in the Land of Fables #58
JACKDAW AND THE SONGBIRDS
Weeks elapsed between the first draft of the new fable, ‘Jackdaw and the Songbirds,’ and its completion. I had other commitments. And I also contrived to delete my website. But we’re back. In the interim, however, I had forgotten what had inspired the idea. Fortunately, I had kept some notes. The idea, it seems, was prompted by another of Elizabethan fabulist Arthur Golding’s translations.
‘Of the Ostrich and the Nightingale’ is a dispute about prestige and pre-eminence.
Two birds, the nightingale and the ostrich, hold themselves in such esteem neither can admit the other as their equal. The nightingale boasts its song has “assuaged the storms of lovers,” while the ostrich claims nations have used his feathers “for their ornament” as reward for bravery. To win the argument, the nightingale ‘defaces’ the ostrich of its feathers, proving that these were a superficial quality.
I have to say I didn’t expect the dispute to go in that direction. I assumed the author would favour the nightingale’s artistry because, this was my inclination, but instead this artist was portrayed as an arrogant little shit, and, well, that’s not unheard of. Still, I began to think of a nightingale’s music being challenged or resented, a scenario closer to Krylov’s ‘The Ass and the Nightingale,’ similar to one composed by Diderot; a denunciation of philistinism, I guess you might call it.
As dusk approaches, I can listen the blackbird sing from each corner of its territory. I also hear the raucous calls of rooks and jackdaws. The contrast is stark. I imagined a dispute, a difference of point of view between them, my old friend Jackdaw and the blackbird, but instead of competition between them, Jackdaw seeks to put one bird in its place by producing a rival. It doesn’t work out as he planned.
You can read the new fable here: ‘Jackdaw and the Songbirds’
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #69
A frog plays banjo by the light of the moon. I can’t find the exact image that inspired the latest fable, ‘The Frog and the Moon,’ but in my search I discovered the sub-genre of ‘frogs making music by moonlight’ and I hate it. Regardless of tasteful composition and colour palette, as seen above, the […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #68
“Ogni scarrafone è bell’ a mamma soja:” ~~~ This Neopolitan proverb, translated as ‘every cockroach is beautiful to its mother,’ sums up the fondness and natural bias a parent has for their children. Sometimes a proverb is all you need; narrative is redundant, little more than an amusing illustration of the point. There are […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #67
~~~ ‘The Dog, the Meat, and the Reflection,’ ‘The Dog and the Shadow,’ ‘The Dog in the River,’ ‘or ‘The Dog and the Piece of Flesh.’ Or number 133 in Perry’s index. A simple comic fable about a dog—a silly, greedy dog—who sees its reflection in a pond and tries to steal the meat from […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #66
‘The Fox and the Crow’ is one of the classics. La Fontaine places it second in his collection; it pops up early in both Jacobs and L’Estrange, and in the Penguin (Handford) edition too. The image of a fox sitting at the foot of a tree looking up at a crow is one of the […]